On bicycling, urban morphology, the hollowness of mass consumerism, historic preservation, and bohemian haunts
I was going to begin this blog entry by profusely apologizing for the inexcusable period of time that has elapsed since my last substantive entry. That is, until I read a sardonic piece in "That's Shanghai" magazine exhorting all would-be bloggers, in a step-by-step "how to blog" guide, to do just that (the implication being, of course, that acting as if your adoring public is waiting breathlessly on your every word is the epitome of narcissism). So no apologies! Back to the blog.
I sometimes bestow minor acts of kindness upon strangers, like holding the elevator or stopping for pedestrians when I'm on my bicycle. Sometimes I'm actually treated to an English (and often surprised) "Thank you!"
I've read other expats say that you just have to adapt to "Chinese public manners" which means being willing to push and shove your way into a crowded stairway or subway train, among other things. I haven't changed my public manners too much. At the subway station, people always bunch up waiting to get on the escalator. I usually just take the stairs.
It frustrates me that some stations turn both escalators to the up direction so that all the downward traffic is forced to use the stairs. During busy times, this means anyone who wants to walk upstairs has to swim upstream against a momentous downward force.
But mostly, you just learn to live with crowds. They're biggest on Sunday afternoons, when everyone goes out to walk around the street markets and enjoy the day off. You just have to adjust your pace. I don't mind it.
Riding a bicycle is another thing. You have to ride defensively here.
Just as important, you have to accept your lowly place in the vehicular hierarchy. Just because you have a green light doesn't mean you can proceed across an intersection unhindered. Motor vehicles with red lights don't stop for right turns if they can help it; they'll happily cut in front of traffic with a green light right-of-way, especially if its of the two-wheeled persuasion. Likewise with left turns on green lights. Motor vehicles don't yield to bicyclists going straight on green. Traffic accidents are the leading cause of death in Shanghai. Cavalier cycling won't suffice here. I purchased a bell for my bike, but rear-view mirrors for bicycles don't seem to exist in this country, so I created my own using a cosmetic mirror and some duct tape.
But bicycling in Shanghai is not all bad.
Most of the large streets have bike lanes that are separated from the main traffic stream by barricades. You still have the share the lane with motorbikes and rural migrants pushing medieval hand carts, but at least the damage potential is lower. Bicyclists tend to bunch up at intersections, so that when entering on a green light, you have a small measure of "safety in numbers". If the bicyclists have a critical mass, they might actually be able to collectively fend off a car attempting to turn right on red.
My bicycle commute to school each morning is a pretty reliable 25 minutes. There are about 10 traffic signals on the route, and I usually have to stop at about 5 of them, some for several minutes at a time.
Between my apartment and school are mostly long, wide blocks. In other parts of the city, which I am beginning to explore in greater depth, the character of the urban fabric varies significantly.
Some streets are good for bicycling and some aren't. On some, bicyclists (and motorbikes, too) are outright banned. These are usually the high-end shopping streets where the local government has decided two-wheeled folks would taint the ambiance of luxury they're trying to cultivate.
But that's just as well for me, because the streets where bicyclists can and do go are much more interesting. I've found that the best streets to bicycle are the smaller, narrow streets lined with small shops and restaurants and older housing. Every year, more and more of these streets disappear under the wrecking balls of the relentless development machine, but fortunately there are still lots of them here. Despite being narrow, many are actually quite long, serving as essential arteries of mobility through this sprawling city. Best of all, few cars venture into these back streets.
The more I explore Shanghai, the more I like.
And in light of my love-hate relationship with the city, that's a good thing.
On the surface there are lots of things to dislike.
Like the rampant consumer culture and accompanying domineering, alienating built form that dominate much of the city's many visible streetscapes.
As someone who's always been fairly disdainful of mass consumer culture, Shanghai's myriad colossal shopping centers can sometimes seem soul-crushing.
Walking through these malls, I can't help but feel sorry for the hundreds of shopgirls (they're always women) with nothing to do. Many are programmed to smile and greet every passer-by with a formulaic "huanying guanling" (we welcome your gracious presence", which, in its endless repetition, rings insincerity. Many don't even bother with the greetings anymore, and sit, bored, tapping away into their mobile devices, which are always fancier than mine.
As is the case with consumerism everywhere, there's a hollowness here. But whereas I would describe that hollowness at home as more more spiritual and psychological, here it has economic dimensions too. The local politicians who issue permits encourage mega-developments like this, whether or not there's an actual underlying demand for it. For them, this accomplishes two goals: it lines their pockets with kickbacks, and it gives them something they can show off to visiting bigwigs from Beijing. But the result is unhealthy imbalance between supply and demand. The first floor of the Cloud Nine Shopping Center across from my apartment is always busy, but if you climb the next seven floors it looks progressively more and more like a ghost town. Most of the foot traffic, in any case, is just window shopping. In all of the times I've walked through the first floor of that shopping center (and it's a lot of times, as the most direct route from my apartment to the subway and bus stations passes directly through it), I've never seen a single customer buying anything from the booth selling $100 mud facial masks.
These malls are one face of China, and it is increasingly the one of choice for many of China's movers and shakers. Thankfully, however, it's not the only face. If it were, then I don't think I could stay in Shanghai. I would suffocate of boredom, drown in a sea of Papa Johns and Cartier. No, mercifully the city of Shanghai is a diverse place. There are people here from every province in China, and people from most countries on Earth. There are rich and poor and everyone in between. And there are goods and services to meet that diverse assemblage of consumers. After all, we're all consumers, from the richest of us to the poorest. Sometimes I get a little careless in my anti-consumerism tirades. In reality, there's a great deal of consumerism in China that I think is fantastic: its the informal economy of the neighborhood markets, the wet markets, the street markets, the people selling things out of wagons attached to their bicycles. These markets have been functioning in China for thousands of years, and I hope that no amount of luxury shopping mall construction will stop that. But I do wonder when I see the clear generational divide between who shops at the former and who shops at the latter.
The built environment of Shanghai is varied, too. Despite all the recent development, all the blocks inundated by cranes and 24/7 construction work, all the destruction and displacement and renewal, significant chunks of older urban forms still survive. And increasingly, some are even being actively preserved.
The first time I came to Shanghai, I saw the "Old Chinese city" around Yu Garden, and the French Concession, which both contain lots of historical and well-preserved (or well-rebuilt in an "old style") architecture. But there's a lot I didn't see on that first trip that I'm finding now. One place is Duolun Road. One of my new friends, a Shanghai native, took me there last week. During the early 20th century it was a hive of activity for China's writers, bookbinders, poets, and political activists whose agitations helped bring about the Republic of China in 1911. For many years the area fell into disrepair, but a few years ago it was cleaned up and now is home to a number of antique shops and historical sights. It has the makings of a very touristy place, but doesn't seem to have hit that stage yet. I found no mention of the street in any of my travel books, and the place was mostly deserted on the Tuesday afternoon in late March when I visited. After entertaining a friend from out of town at the very touristy antique market near Yu Garden the previous week, I found Duolun Road's antique markets a refreshing (if dusty) alternative, full of real antiques and authentic artwork from the communist period.
Another recent find is Taikang Road. Its a maze of pedestrian alleys tucked into a block of old houses that is chock-full of art galleries, hip stores selling Andy Warhol-style images of Mao Zedong alongside Obama "hope" posters, cozy cafes, and international restaurants. The place clearly aims for the same monied clientele that the shopping centers do, but it feels much more akin with cool, slightly edgy, "bohemian" neighborhoods in certain European and American cities. There are no chains, just independent, creative businesses. And while I'm sure there are some serious gentrification forces at work driving up rents for the area's traditional residents, there is still a visible coexistence of the bohemian commercial infrastructure and the old Shainghainese going about their daily business. It's a much more organic, edgy version of another historically preserved commercial development which I wrote about in an earlier post, Xintiandi.
The city is big. The blocks are enormous. Compared to almost any city I can think of in the United States, the density of the urban street grid in Shanghai is far less dense. Yet, at the same time, the overall population density, I'm sure, is far, far denser than even America's most dense cities. That's because Shanghai's huge blocks are full of huge apartment buildings. A lot of the local-level street life occurs inside these apartment blocks, a remnant of communist era urban planning which focused all a person's activities―work, home, recreation―around self-contained units.
The enormous scale of many of these blocks, and the infrastructure that inhabits them, makes for some very un-pedestrian friendly streetscapes. So I prefer to seek out the streetscapes that are more human-scaled. I plan on doing a series of urban transects, complete with photographs and detailed written descriptions of the architecture, urban form, and street life one encounters as one walks along these different streets in Shanghai. Look for that in the coming weeks and months.
And now I'll leave you with a few pictures from my flickr page:
A small urban park (I don't know its name) in the Hongqiao District in Shanghai. The sign in this photograph is noteworthy for two reasons. First, everyone likes a little Chinglish: "enjoy a mordern lifestyle".But more importantly is the second half of the dictum: ""Eco life-style". More evidence of how thoroughly the rhetoric of the green movement has diffused into China (degree to which it's actually practiced notwithstanding)
Someone knew exactly what they were doing here. The Chinese pinyin word "zhou" is pronounced exactly like "Joe" is pronounced in English. Thus, "Trader Joe's". That's Chinese intellectual property rights for you.
Chinese grandfathers are the sweetest.
Bringing your cat to the public park? Without a leash.
That's one placid cat!
In flux - every couple weeks they send a team of construction workers to tear up the stalls in the atrium of the mall near my apartment and replace them with new stalls.
I sometimes bestow minor acts of kindness upon strangers, like holding the elevator or stopping for pedestrians when I'm on my bicycle. Sometimes I'm actually treated to an English (and often surprised) "Thank you!"
I've read other expats say that you just have to adapt to "Chinese public manners" which means being willing to push and shove your way into a crowded stairway or subway train, among other things. I haven't changed my public manners too much. At the subway station, people always bunch up waiting to get on the escalator. I usually just take the stairs.
It frustrates me that some stations turn both escalators to the up direction so that all the downward traffic is forced to use the stairs. During busy times, this means anyone who wants to walk upstairs has to swim upstream against a momentous downward force.
But mostly, you just learn to live with crowds. They're biggest on Sunday afternoons, when everyone goes out to walk around the street markets and enjoy the day off. You just have to adjust your pace. I don't mind it.
Riding a bicycle is another thing. You have to ride defensively here.
Just as important, you have to accept your lowly place in the vehicular hierarchy. Just because you have a green light doesn't mean you can proceed across an intersection unhindered. Motor vehicles with red lights don't stop for right turns if they can help it; they'll happily cut in front of traffic with a green light right-of-way, especially if its of the two-wheeled persuasion. Likewise with left turns on green lights. Motor vehicles don't yield to bicyclists going straight on green. Traffic accidents are the leading cause of death in Shanghai. Cavalier cycling won't suffice here. I purchased a bell for my bike, but rear-view mirrors for bicycles don't seem to exist in this country, so I created my own using a cosmetic mirror and some duct tape.
But bicycling in Shanghai is not all bad.
Most of the large streets have bike lanes that are separated from the main traffic stream by barricades. You still have the share the lane with motorbikes and rural migrants pushing medieval hand carts, but at least the damage potential is lower. Bicyclists tend to bunch up at intersections, so that when entering on a green light, you have a small measure of "safety in numbers". If the bicyclists have a critical mass, they might actually be able to collectively fend off a car attempting to turn right on red.
My bicycle commute to school each morning is a pretty reliable 25 minutes. There are about 10 traffic signals on the route, and I usually have to stop at about 5 of them, some for several minutes at a time.
Between my apartment and school are mostly long, wide blocks. In other parts of the city, which I am beginning to explore in greater depth, the character of the urban fabric varies significantly.
Some streets are good for bicycling and some aren't. On some, bicyclists (and motorbikes, too) are outright banned. These are usually the high-end shopping streets where the local government has decided two-wheeled folks would taint the ambiance of luxury they're trying to cultivate.
But that's just as well for me, because the streets where bicyclists can and do go are much more interesting. I've found that the best streets to bicycle are the smaller, narrow streets lined with small shops and restaurants and older housing. Every year, more and more of these streets disappear under the wrecking balls of the relentless development machine, but fortunately there are still lots of them here. Despite being narrow, many are actually quite long, serving as essential arteries of mobility through this sprawling city. Best of all, few cars venture into these back streets.
The more I explore Shanghai, the more I like.
And in light of my love-hate relationship with the city, that's a good thing.
On the surface there are lots of things to dislike.
Like the rampant consumer culture and accompanying domineering, alienating built form that dominate much of the city's many visible streetscapes.
As someone who's always been fairly disdainful of mass consumer culture, Shanghai's myriad colossal shopping centers can sometimes seem soul-crushing.
Walking through these malls, I can't help but feel sorry for the hundreds of shopgirls (they're always women) with nothing to do. Many are programmed to smile and greet every passer-by with a formulaic "huanying guanling" (we welcome your gracious presence", which, in its endless repetition, rings insincerity. Many don't even bother with the greetings anymore, and sit, bored, tapping away into their mobile devices, which are always fancier than mine.
As is the case with consumerism everywhere, there's a hollowness here. But whereas I would describe that hollowness at home as more more spiritual and psychological, here it has economic dimensions too. The local politicians who issue permits encourage mega-developments like this, whether or not there's an actual underlying demand for it. For them, this accomplishes two goals: it lines their pockets with kickbacks, and it gives them something they can show off to visiting bigwigs from Beijing. But the result is unhealthy imbalance between supply and demand. The first floor of the Cloud Nine Shopping Center across from my apartment is always busy, but if you climb the next seven floors it looks progressively more and more like a ghost town. Most of the foot traffic, in any case, is just window shopping. In all of the times I've walked through the first floor of that shopping center (and it's a lot of times, as the most direct route from my apartment to the subway and bus stations passes directly through it), I've never seen a single customer buying anything from the booth selling $100 mud facial masks.
These malls are one face of China, and it is increasingly the one of choice for many of China's movers and shakers. Thankfully, however, it's not the only face. If it were, then I don't think I could stay in Shanghai. I would suffocate of boredom, drown in a sea of Papa Johns and Cartier. No, mercifully the city of Shanghai is a diverse place. There are people here from every province in China, and people from most countries on Earth. There are rich and poor and everyone in between. And there are goods and services to meet that diverse assemblage of consumers. After all, we're all consumers, from the richest of us to the poorest. Sometimes I get a little careless in my anti-consumerism tirades. In reality, there's a great deal of consumerism in China that I think is fantastic: its the informal economy of the neighborhood markets, the wet markets, the street markets, the people selling things out of wagons attached to their bicycles. These markets have been functioning in China for thousands of years, and I hope that no amount of luxury shopping mall construction will stop that. But I do wonder when I see the clear generational divide between who shops at the former and who shops at the latter.
The built environment of Shanghai is varied, too. Despite all the recent development, all the blocks inundated by cranes and 24/7 construction work, all the destruction and displacement and renewal, significant chunks of older urban forms still survive. And increasingly, some are even being actively preserved.
The first time I came to Shanghai, I saw the "Old Chinese city" around Yu Garden, and the French Concession, which both contain lots of historical and well-preserved (or well-rebuilt in an "old style") architecture. But there's a lot I didn't see on that first trip that I'm finding now. One place is Duolun Road. One of my new friends, a Shanghai native, took me there last week. During the early 20th century it was a hive of activity for China's writers, bookbinders, poets, and political activists whose agitations helped bring about the Republic of China in 1911. For many years the area fell into disrepair, but a few years ago it was cleaned up and now is home to a number of antique shops and historical sights. It has the makings of a very touristy place, but doesn't seem to have hit that stage yet. I found no mention of the street in any of my travel books, and the place was mostly deserted on the Tuesday afternoon in late March when I visited. After entertaining a friend from out of town at the very touristy antique market near Yu Garden the previous week, I found Duolun Road's antique markets a refreshing (if dusty) alternative, full of real antiques and authentic artwork from the communist period.
Another recent find is Taikang Road. Its a maze of pedestrian alleys tucked into a block of old houses that is chock-full of art galleries, hip stores selling Andy Warhol-style images of Mao Zedong alongside Obama "hope" posters, cozy cafes, and international restaurants. The place clearly aims for the same monied clientele that the shopping centers do, but it feels much more akin with cool, slightly edgy, "bohemian" neighborhoods in certain European and American cities. There are no chains, just independent, creative businesses. And while I'm sure there are some serious gentrification forces at work driving up rents for the area's traditional residents, there is still a visible coexistence of the bohemian commercial infrastructure and the old Shainghainese going about their daily business. It's a much more organic, edgy version of another historically preserved commercial development which I wrote about in an earlier post, Xintiandi.
The city is big. The blocks are enormous. Compared to almost any city I can think of in the United States, the density of the urban street grid in Shanghai is far less dense. Yet, at the same time, the overall population density, I'm sure, is far, far denser than even America's most dense cities. That's because Shanghai's huge blocks are full of huge apartment buildings. A lot of the local-level street life occurs inside these apartment blocks, a remnant of communist era urban planning which focused all a person's activities―work, home, recreation―around self-contained units.
The enormous scale of many of these blocks, and the infrastructure that inhabits them, makes for some very un-pedestrian friendly streetscapes. So I prefer to seek out the streetscapes that are more human-scaled. I plan on doing a series of urban transects, complete with photographs and detailed written descriptions of the architecture, urban form, and street life one encounters as one walks along these different streets in Shanghai. Look for that in the coming weeks and months.
And now I'll leave you with a few pictures from my flickr page:
A small urban park (I don't know its name) in the Hongqiao District in Shanghai. The sign in this photograph is noteworthy for two reasons. First, everyone likes a little Chinglish: "enjoy a mordern lifestyle".But more importantly is the second half of the dictum: ""Eco life-style". More evidence of how thoroughly the rhetoric of the green movement has diffused into China (degree to which it's actually practiced notwithstanding)
Someone knew exactly what they were doing here. The Chinese pinyin word "zhou" is pronounced exactly like "Joe" is pronounced in English. Thus, "Trader Joe's". That's Chinese intellectual property rights for you.
Chinese grandfathers are the sweetest.
Bringing your cat to the public park? Without a leash.
That's one placid cat!
In flux - every couple weeks they send a team of construction workers to tear up the stalls in the atrium of the mall near my apartment and replace them with new stalls.
posted by Matthew Hartzell at 9:06 AM
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